State experts called in to inspect Richland County Jail after inmate deaths
Fifteen experts from the South Carolina Department of Corrections earlier this week performed a two-day inspection of the troubled Richland County jail in response to conditions, authorities said.
“Ongoing issues have raised the level of concern about safety, and the decision was made to analyze the facility with this level of detailed expertise,” Department of Corrections spokesperson Chrysti Shain wrote in a statement Friday.
The jail has been under close scrutiny by SCDOC since a critical report issued in February found that for three years the jail had repeatedly violated standards, ranging from chronic understaffing to unattended cells. But despite attention from county officials and a pledge to invest upwards of $12 million in the jail, problems have persisted at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.
“I was given an offer to allow the Department of Corrections to provide assistance to Richland County and I accepted that offer,” County administrator Leonardo Brown told The State on Saturday. He had accepted an offer from Blake Taylor, the director of compliance, standards and inspections at the SCDOC, to send experts into the jail who could provide technical assistance to Richland County.
“It was separate and apart from a formal inspection,” Brown said.
The SCDOC said there was no specific event that prompted the ”detailed inspection.” Shain described it as “another step in the ongoing process to work with the center on meeting the minimum standards for local detention facilities and ensure safety for inmates, staff and the public.”
Brown said he welcomed feedback that would allow the county to meet its goal of improving the facility.
The inspection on Wednesday and Thursday comes after Brown assured an ad hoc meeting of the Richland County Council this week that improvements were being made to the jail despite ongoing challenges.
“It’s a process, it’s a journey. It’s not an event. It’s not a quick fix,” Brown told council members on Tuesday.
Since June, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department has responded to reports of six inmates being stabbed. On July 11, the sheriff’s department and other agencies conducted a manhunt for Charles Meadors, a 38-year-old inmate who escaped the jail.
Staffing remains an ongoing problem at the jail, with dozens of positions from detention center officers to jail director unfilled. At a council meeting in March, interim director Crayman Harvey said that there were still 105 unfilled positions at the jail, calling the staffing situation “horrible.”
On Tuesday, Brown told members of the press that he was still in the process of finding candidates for the jail director position, but declined to offer more details about how many candidates county officials were considering. Brown also acknowledged that while the county was seeing some success in hiring for detention center officers after raising starting pay to $40,000, the jail was still struggling with retaining staff.
Problems with staffing may reflect what Harvey described as a need for “culture change” inside of the jail.
Since January, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department has reported that four detention center officers have been arrested for smuggling in contraband into the jail. Another officer, Martavius Smith, was arrested in April for assaulting an inmate.
At the meeting, Brown said individuals outside the jail would throw contraband over the fence, where inmates could then use improvised fishing reels to pull the items through windows that they had damaged.
Brown highlighted progress that had been made renovating the jail’s kitchen as well as the special housing unit. However, Brown said inmates continued to damage the facility, often in order to manufacture weapons or facilitate smuggling contraband.
“You have individuals who have literally torn down the infrastructure that you have put in place to provide for them,” Brown told an ad hoc committee of the county council.
An audit of the jail will be prepared by the department and will be delivered to the Richland County Administration, according to the Department of Corrections.
This story was originally published July 29, 2023 at 3:09 PM.